


break like a wave upon your heart

by sylveonimbus (cloud_sakura)



Series: little heroes [1]
Category: Free!, Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-16
Updated: 2014-08-16
Packaged: 2018-02-13 10:40:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2147619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cloud_sakura/pseuds/sylveonimbus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is not a sad story. It's a story of growing up and into yourself, regardless of what your destiny seems to be. This is the story of how a little boy finds love, loses it, and regains it, and how you should never lose hope.</p>
            </blockquote>





	break like a wave upon your heart

**Author's Note:**

> If anyone wants to point out any mistakes or just wants to ask more about demigod!AU, [just send me an ask!](http://sylveonimbus.tumblr.com) This is going to be a series if I can work myself up to it, so...be nice, please?

_If you love someone, let them go._

*******

Rin loves the cherry blossoms. He’s seen them sometimes on vacation, and on that memorable time he next sees his shining.

It’s on a cloudy day, ironically enough, and the little boy stands under the cherry blossom tree, catching the falling petals. He doesn’t say a word, just looks up, eyes brighter and bluer than the ocean, and stands there like he has nowhere he’d rather be.

Rin feels something strange in his throat, and he can't figure out what it is.

Rin is eight years old, and he loves all the things he can’t have.

*******

He doesn’t understand death. He doesn’t. His father is supposed to be around. Death shouldn’t hurt. That’s what the spirits he sometimes sees in old houses and shrines tell him. They stand around, and wish they died, really died, wish they had moved on. They call him strange, and flock to him hungrily, as if he’s bringing them something they desire, but shrink away when they touch his hands.

Rin wants his father to be happy. He knows that he can be, knows that he’s a good man, but he didn’t – he didn’t deserve to die. Nobody should – they shouldn’t.

He touches one rose after another in the garden and watches them shrink away and wilt, the petals hissing at him, the green leaves menacing instead of pretty like they always are when Mom or Gou comes in.

Rin is six years old, and the things he loves the most, hurts him the most.

 *******  

 _You’re selfish,_ Haru doesn’t say, but Rin can see it in his eyes. He doesn’t know how to make this better, how to explain, how to tell the person you love the most that you don’t know how not to hurt them. How you have to let them go.

 _It’s my dream,_ he says, lying through his teeth, and watches his water-flower walk away.

Rin is twelve, and he lets him go.

*******

Rin has a dream, and it's about kissing Haruka Nanase.

He brings it up at the next sleepover – he doesn't tell that it's about Haru, of course, but Haruka sputters at him anyway. Makoto and Nagisa laugh and tease him, and wonder what it's like to be kissed. Rin launches into a detailed explanation of how the girls in shoujo manga seem to feel (he doesn't read them, of course, but his sister does, so he _knows_ ).

"Huh. I bet you don't know a thing," Haru deadpans, back to his normal facial expression.

"Well, neither do you, Nanase!" Rin shoots back, pouting.

Haru seems to contemplate this, before leaning over to peck his cheek. "Now I do," he says. His expression turns a little less deadpan, and more thoughtful. "Huh."

Makoto breaks out into fresh peals of laughter at Rin's shocked face, and Nagisa follows suit. Rin can't even look Haru in the eye for the next two hours, and when they watch Finding Nemo together, he ends up with Haru's head on his lap.

_What are you doing **what** are you doing what are you **doing** to me, Haru?_

Makoto sees his expression, and smiles. "He doesn't mean it, Rin!"

That's what I'm afraid of, he doesn't say, and smiles at Makoto. "I know."

Haru's tasted the fruit, so how can he let him leave now?

*******

This doesn’t even make sense, because they’re fourteen, and Rin hasn’t seen Haru since he was fourteen, and in that race – in that race, he destroyed everything. Fucked up everything.

But that’s what he wanted, isn’t it?

 _Look at your goal,_ a new voice urges. Sousuke puts a hand on his shoulder, electric blue-green eyes staring right through him. _You’re looking at the reflection when you could be looking at the sky._

 _But Haru isn’t a reflection,_ he wants to say. _He isn’t, Sousuke, don’t you understand -?_ he doesn't say. _I want to follow my own path, not that of the gods,_ he doesn't say.

Makoto is next to Haru, and their hands are linked, and Haru’s face is turned towards the setting sun. He keeps walking, and Makoto follows, looking back at Rin like he understands.

How can he understand? No one understands.

There’s a dull pain in his chest, and the world keeps flickering around him, from falling snowflakes to falling sakura petals. The snow intensifies as he runs towards them.

_Not my spring. Don’t take my spring away._

Makoto smiles at him sadly. _I’m sorry it has to be this way._

 _No, no!_ There are tears and there is blood, and he doesn’t know whether it’s tears or blood but the snow is red, and so are the falling cherry blossom petals from the trees, blurring together again. He stops and cries, and hates himself for crying, and the petals touch his hands and wither into dust.

**_Rin, Rin, Rin._ **

He looks up through his tears, and sees Haru’s smile, feels Haru surround him like a second skin. He knows he’s not there, but he’s there with him.

_**Wait for me, Rin.** _

Spring always comes when you least expect it, Rin thinks, letting the voice, the presence, wrap around him like the water in a pool.

Rin is fourteen in this dream, and he waits.

*******

He wakes up before he knows he’s awake, choosing to ignore what he’s dreamt because he hasn’t felt so much at peace for a long time.

(It never gets easier, the dreams. At least this time it’s less prophetic, less blood, less night terror. Less Sousuke staring him down and telling him that as a son of Zeus he _knows_ what he’s doing on a mission, _thanks, Matsuoka,_ before it all goes to hell.)

He goes through the motions of brushing and skincare (something that Gou had gotten him into the last time he was at home), and when he steps foot outside of the cabin, it’s almost darker than the inside, but dawn is breaking, and it’s late April so the smell of spring in the air makes no sense at all.

It’s summer. Why does it –

“Matsuoka.” The apparition that was suddenly on his shoulder would have been startling to anyone else, but he’s used to the spirit familiars by now. This one’s a little cat spirit that often follows him around when he’s at practice.

“News?”

“There’s a new one,” the spirit purrs, curling its tail around his neck. “He smells familiar to you.”

Rin doesn’t question it, he can barely understand half of what they mean half the time anyway, so it doesn’t matter. “Is he determined?”

“Might as well be.” The spirit jumps down and starts walking towards Coach’s house, and Rin makes a face. It’s never pleasant when they have new people around and he decides to intimidate the fuck out of them.

“What do you mean, exactly?” he asks as he catches up to the feline spirit, unable to suppress his curiosity.

The cat bares its teeth at him. It’s a kitten, really, and he’s stuck admiring its small, pointed teeth. Kind of like his own teeth had been a few years ago.

Rin stops that line of thought, his hands going to twist the beads on his neck. He’s not going to think about it.

“You’ll have to,” the cat comments, and if the beast wasn’t his spirit familiar, Rin would have kicked it for reading his head (it’s not something it can help, after all, not when he’s practically projecting his thoughts to the random spirits floating around camp). He growls at it, though, and it cackles, the meowing noises shrill in the silence of the dawn.

“Wh…” he stops at the sight in front of him. The ocean always leaves him breathless – the Sanctuary really is at the most perfect spot, but. There’s someone there, standing on top of the ledge overlooking the sea. And the sea is rising up to meet him, twist around him, break into a million particles of light like every time he’s seen him before in the water, loving it like it’s a part of himself.

No. It’s not. How.

Blue eyes bore into his skull when the dark head turns around, the ocean water still twisting and spinning around him from where it hits the ledge. Blue eyes as deep and laser-clear as the deep ocean.

Maybe he should decipher his dreams more often.

In the distance he can hear Makoto joyfully greet Nagisa – _since when do, since when does, were they all half-bloods?_ Rin thinks stupidly. _How did I not notice?_

It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. Haru is here, and he smells like ocean water and – and.

Spring. Haru.

He gets down from the ledge, the water lovingly clinging to his hair even as it falls away, sinking into the earth at his feet, near his blue sneakers. “Rin.”

Rin pulls down his cap, and smirks. “Tch, still as water-obsessed as ever, Haru?”

He’s not okay. It’s going to take a long time for him to even be in the _vicinity_ of okay. But in this moment –

Rin is sixteen, and spring is here, and in this moment his world is _shining_.

*******

Sometimes, spring arrives in midsummer.

 *******  

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, references.  
> The story of Persephone and Hades, which is mentioned throughout the fic, is [explained here in a hurry](http://sylveonimbus.tumblr.com/post/94925398599/explanation-for-the-fic-thing) (I read it a long time ago, so I'm not really sure how accurate it is).
> 
> In case it wasn’t very clear, Makoto is the son of Demeter, Haru is Rin’s “water-flower” (explanation later) and Poseidon’s son, Rin is the son of Hades, and Sousuke’s the son of Zeus. They’re all half human, and NO, it doesn’t count as “incest” because god DNA is whacked up.
> 
> The story is also kind of whacked up, because Rin is continuously under the impression that he's imprisoning Haru, like Hades did with Persephone, when in reality, he's just being an emo shark. And, uh, the flowers don't like Rin because Persephone doesn't like sons of Hades.
> 
> Also, the sons of Zeus, Poseidon and Hades are usually always at loggerheads, like the three Gods themselves. This time, it’s a love triangle instead. Sort of.
> 
> This is so far from being an actual Percy Jackson AU at this point *groans* I'm sorry?


End file.
